Back in Kathmandu

It was great to get back to our flat; once again in control of what we eat, a blessed hot shower after 11 days of cold water, and a comfy bed. All other team members have returned to Oz.  Everything was lovely and clean and even a frozen meal in the freezer for us on our return.  Thanks, Liat.  Tracing back to our days in Chinchiu.  We moved into the hostel Friday night.  All that night Grahame was violently ill, with vomiting and diarrhoea.  He had been in a village with Raju and had food there, so I guess that was the problem.  He was looking pretty green about the gills, but we had to wander down to the old hostel for breakfast.  He couldn't face food  so decided to go to the little street barber for a shave.  While sitting there, he passed out and vomited all over himself.  The barber sent for one of the hostel people, as he knew that we were associated there.  Raju and the hostel houseparent cleaned him up and changed his clothes, bundled him into a taxi and took him to the hospital, 40 minutes away on a rough winding road.  Grahame was still not with it.  The dear man who travelled with him, cradled him all the way, trying to alleviate the bumps.  One of the hostel girls went also as an interpreter.  He sat in a dirty hospital, right next to a foul toilet, from 9a.m. to 6 p.m..  He had 6 doses of saline and a blood test.  When the doctor came late in the afternoon, it turned out that he had been trained by Dr.Bruce Hayes, who was a good friend of ours years ago in Dalby.  He was quite competent.  He wouldn't  allow him to go home but there was  a room upstairs with its own toilet.  There was like a day-bed there also.  So the two dear people who went with him, curled up there to look after him.  He was allowed home the next morning, but in true Nepali style, there was a bundh (strike) on for four days, so he had to come home in an ambulance, as emergency vehicles and special tourist buses are the only vehicles allowed on the road.  Apparently, the ambulance man was an angry sort of a character.  Our little translator needed to be sick from the winding road, and he almost took off with out her.  She had to run to get back in the back.  Then there was a drunk man on the road, wandering along; he backed up his ambulance, called him over, and punched him in the face.  Anyway he arrived home, still very shakey, with antibiotics in hand but was washed out for a few days.  The night Grahame was in the hospital, very early the next morning, I could hear loud impassioned prayer.  There were two ladies from the church who had come in the wee small hours to pray for Grahame and the Teacher Training.  These people are so full on for the Lord.  They have absolutely nothing, and need to rely on God for everything.  None of them can afford medical treatment, and many of them are ill because of their hardships they live through, so they come for prayer for healing.  God does amazing things among them.  Often these events cause many to follow the Lord.  There is one little baby in the church here who has cancer of the eye, and Raju paid for her to have an operation.  She was in church the other day with one plastic insert in her eye awaiting further treatment.  Some here call Raju "mama" because he is such a mother to them all.  More to come